Existing systems such as computer systems are known to employ relatively wide electrical buses for carrying address, data and various control signals to and from a multitude of devices. For example, these electrical buses serve to couple two or more integrated circuits (chips) in a computer or other system. There can be thousands of signals traversing between chips. Wiring massive amounts of signal connections across various chips and printed circuit boards can cause system cost to significantly escalate.
To limit this wiring or cabling cost, and also the number of chip inputs/outputs (I/O), it has become common practice to multiplex signals across electrical buses. As is known, multiplexing is a signal processing method by which multiple signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium, e.g., wire. Multiplexing reduces the number of wires or cables that need to be routed.